By DONNA THORNTON, Editor
Douglas Emge, owner of Albertville Aviation, died Tuesday when the single-engine Vans RV-4 he was piloting crashed in DeKalb County.
The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office responded to the downed aircraft, and used social media to direct traffic away from the 4700 block of County Road 3 in the Whiton community.
According to the DeKalb County Emergency Management Agency the plane crashed at about 6:50 a.m. behind the Whiton water tank.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
Meanwhile, the local aviation community is dealing with the loss of a great pilot and a great friend.
“I don’t know of a more selfless person — except for my mom and dad — than Doug,” Chuck Ellis said. The former Albertville City Council member said he’d known Emge, 62, for about 35 years.
“It’s hard to speak about him in the past-tense,” Ellis said, “because of the kind of guy he was. He was full of joy, full of happiness.
“He was a heck of a pilot. I lost a good friend today.” Emge was also a great husband, and a loving grandfather, he said, who knew Emge as their “Doogee.”
“He’ll live on in their memories, as he will for so many.”
Ellis said when he was on the council around 2008-2009, the airport got a lot of recognition and a lot of it came as a result of Emge’s work. The airport started to get corporate planes hangared there, he explained, and he credited it to Emge’s focus on details.
“He’s do the small things for people that most places don’t do,” Ellis said, such as making sure planes were cared for, fueled and that facilities were clean — something he believes was instilled in Emge during his service in the Marine Corps.
“He catered to them like they were kings and queens,” he aid.
And when Ellis told Emge he planned to recognize him for his work at a council meeting, he wanted no part of it.
“He was not ‘look at me.’ He was ‘look at this,’” Ellis said.
People who fly into north Alabama would choose to land at Albertville, he said, because of the care Emge’s “fuel-side” of the airport provided.
Ellis said Emge got into aviation while he was a Marine, working on F-4s in Arizona, then on a base in Hawaii. “That’s where he got his passion for flying,” he said.
For Ellis, the news came early Tuesday morning. He said the chief of the Alder Springs Fire Department called to ask him if it had been Emge involved in “that crash.”
As a former Alabama State Trooper, Ellis said his first thought was car crash, and he called the Decatur Trooper Post to ask for detail. When he was told they’d had no crash involving Emge, he called the Albertville Airport and learned it had been a plane crash.
“It was like a kick in the gut,” he said.
“You know, flying is a fraternity,” Ellis explained. Not a lot of people do it, because of the expense. But even if you can’t fly as much, at times like now when fuel is so expensive, you can get together with people who share your passion for the air and talk about it. That was often what he and Ellis did.
“We hung out a lot. We’d talk about flying, and about life. And we’d talk about flying some more,” he said.
“I can’t say enough about how he will be missed,” Ellis said, his emotions evident as he talked about his friend.
“You know they tell you that you should tell people how you feel because you never know when it will be the last time,” he said — something that’s not always easy for men to do. The last time he talked to Emge, Ellis said, he told him “I love you.”
“And he said ‘I love you, too,’” Ellis recalled.
“And today, he’s gone.”
